''The Moon & Antarctica'' is the third
studio album
An album is a collection of audio recordings issued on compact disc (CD), vinyl, audio tape, or another medium such as digital distribution. Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early 20th century as individual 78 rpm records c ...
by American
rock band
Modest Mouse
Modest Mouse is an American rock band formed in 1992 in Issaquah, Washington, and currently based in Portland, Oregon. The founding members are lead singer/guitarist Isaac Brock, drummer Jeremiah Green, and bassist Eric Judy. Strongly influence ...
, released on June 13, 2000, by
Epic Records
Epic Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, the North American division of Japanese conglomerate Sony. The label was founded predominantly as a jazz and classical m ...
. The album's title is taken from the opening scene of the 1982 film ''
Blade Runner
''Blade Runner'' is a 1982 science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott, and written by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples. Starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, and Edward James Olmos, it is an adaptation of Philip K. Dick's ...
'', where the main character (
Rick Deckard
Rick Deckard is a fictional character and the protagonist of Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel '' Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?''. Harrison Ford portrayed the character in the 1982 film adaptation, ''Blade Runner'', and reprised his role in t ...
) reads a newspaper headlined "Farming the Oceans,
the Moon
The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...
and
Antarctica
Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest contine ...
".
''The Moon & Antarctica'' peaked at number 120 on the US
''Billboard'' 200,
and received positive reviews from critics, who praised its subject matter and change in sound from earlier albums and frontman
Isaac Brock
Major-General Sir Isaac Brock KB (6 October 1769 – 13 October 1812) was a British Army officer and colonial administrator from Guernsey. Brock was assigned to Lower Canada in 1802. Despite facing desertions and near-mutinies, he c ...
's introspective lyrics. It was also hailed for being an expansion of the band's sound, much due to their new major label budget as well as the production of
Brian Deck
Brian Deck is an American music producer and member of band Red Red Meat. He co-founded Idful Studios in 1988. Since becoming a full-time producer, Deck has worked with bands and artists including Modest Mouse, Iron & Wine, Califone, All Smiles, ...
. In 2021,
NME
''New Musical Express'' (''NME'') is a British music, film, gaming, and culture website and brand. Founded as a newspaper in 1952, with the publication being referred to as a 'rock inkie', the NME would become a magazine that ended up as a f ...
referred to it as "one of the greatest records ever made".
Production
The album was the band's first released by a major record label, being issued on Epic Records.
[Cohen, Jonathan. "Epic To Mine Indie Base For Modest Mouse Set." Billboard 112.25 (2000): 24. Academic Search Premier. Web. 2 Nov. 2011] Despite the fans' common concern that the switch to a major record label would change the band's unique sound, Isaac Brock assured fans that this would not be the case, "I don't think the new album is at all overpolished or anything. We spent more time getting crazy sounds than making things sound polished.
"
The album was produced by
Brian Deck
Brian Deck is an American music producer and member of band Red Red Meat. He co-founded Idful Studios in 1988. Since becoming a full-time producer, Deck has worked with bands and artists including Modest Mouse, Iron & Wine, Califone, All Smiles, ...
, who first met the band at a concert in Detroit. "We ended up on a bill together at The Magic Stick in Detroit, and we got along really well, we hung out till the end of the night—and maybe consumed a fair amount of beer together" says Deck.
[Wood, Mikael.]
Rewind: Modest Mouse and The Moon and Antarctica.
par. 5. myspace.com. 17 Aug 2010. Web. 14 Nov 2011. Deck and Brock fell out of touch shortly thereafter, but reconnected a few years later, when Brock invited Califone (which included several members of Deck's band Red Red Meat) to hit the road as Modest Mouse's opening act.
The album was the first project to be recorded in Clava Studios in Chicago.
[Weldon, Rick. "The Making Of The Moon." Electronic Musician 17.1 (2001): 114. Academic Search Premier. Web. 2 Nov. 2011.] When Modest Mouse band members arrived for the recording, the studio was not completely finished.
Though Deck was mostly producing under Perishable Records at the time, and the studio was built mostly for Perishable projects, Deck had no problems producing under Epic Records. Despite being under a major label the band "remains largely self-managed and still drive themselves across the country on tour",
and Brock was fairly involved in the mixing process. Deck said of Brock's involvement that, "By the end of making the record, he was able to mastermind some cool maneuvers with plug-ins and Pro Tools. It wasn't so much that he was mixing, but he could look at a song, understand the musical event that he wanted to make happen, understand the tools at his disposal, relate it in a way that I could understand, and make it happen pretty quickly."
In the middle of recording, Brock was attacked and had his jaw broken by a group of ruffians hanging out at a park across the street from where the band were staying in Chicago. "It laid him up in the hospital for a week," Deck says. "Then his jaw was wired shut for two or three months."
The recording for the album took 5 months, beginning in July 1999 and running until November 1999.
Reception
''The Moon & Antarctica'' was released to positive reviews from music critics.
Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...
, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, reported an average score of 82 based on 22 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".
Stephen Thompson of ''
The A.V. Club
''The A.V. Club'' is an American online newspaper and entertainment website featuring reviews, interviews, and other articles that examine films, music, television, books, games, and other elements of pop-culture media. ''The A.V. Club'' was cre ...
'' felt that ''The Moon & Antarctica'' was the band's "weirdest record yet" and would downplay worries that Modest Mouse's move to a major label "would smooth out the edges of the group's brash, jerky sound", calling it a "sort of concept album about cold and distant places" held together by "a strange sort of precision, lending lurching power to the strongest material."
Nick Catucci of ''
The Village Voice
''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture paper, known for being the country's first alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher, John Wilcock, and Norman Mailer, the ''Voice'' began as a platform for the crea ...
'' noted the album's more streamlined production, in contrast to the
lo-fi
Lo-fi (also typeset as lofi or low-fi; short for low fidelity) is a music or production quality in which elements usually regarded as imperfections in the context of a recording or performance are present, sometimes as a deliberate choice. The ...
quality of their previous work, and complimented the fact that "the studio scrubbing leaves no noticeable film; even the effects—like the spacey guitar that launches 'Gravity Rides Everything'—ring true." Heather Phares of
AllMusic
AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...
felt that the production enhanced the album's introspective tone and called the album "their most cohesive collection of songs to date" and "an impressive, if flawed, map of Modest Mouse's ambitions and fears."
''
Melody Maker
''Melody Maker'' was a British weekly music magazine, one of the world's earliest music weeklies; according to its publisher, IPC Media, the earliest. It was founded in 1926, largely as a magazine for dance band musicians, by Leicester-born ...
'' praised ''The Moon & Antarctica'' as being "beyond anything else they've ever achieved".
Robert Christgau
Robert Thomas Christgau ( ; born April 18, 1942) is an American music journalist and essayist. Among the most well-known and influential music critics, he began his career in the late 1960s as one of the earliest professional rock critics and ...
of ''The Village Voice'' remarked that Isaac Brock "may be every bit the ass he claims, but basically he seems chagrined that he was ever so inept or unlucky as to get caught up in this, as the saying goes, downward spiral. And unlike other rock pessimists we might name, he's so modest about it that he ends up with an uplifting representation of human life as damn shame."
Brent DiCrescenzo of ''
Pitchfork
A pitchfork (also a hay fork) is an agricultural tool with a long handle and two to five tines used to lift and pitch or throw loose material, such as hay, straw, manure, or leaves.
The term is also applied colloquially, but inaccurately, to th ...
'' described ''The Moon & Antarctica'' as an "intoxicating mix of uncertainty and confidence".
''
LA Weekly
''LA Weekly'' is a free weekly alternative newspaper in Los Angeles, California. It was founded in 1978 by Jay Levin, who served as president and editor until 1991. Voice Media Group sold the paper in late 2017 to Semanal Media LLC, whose paren ...
''s Rita Neyler called the album "darker and colder" than the band's previous work, but nonetheless representative of "the very particular blend of peculiar lyrics and uncompromising rock that consistently weaves through all their records." In a negative review, ''
Spin
Spin or spinning most often refers to:
* Spinning (textiles), the creation of yarn or thread by twisting fibers together, traditionally by hand spinning
* Spin, the rotation of an object around a central axis
* Spin (propaganda), an intentionally b ...
''s Chris Ryan felt that "mistaking subject for style, Modest Mouse has chosen to accentuate on a tendency to drift rather than an ability to write emotionally effective songs."
Accolades
''
Pitchfork
A pitchfork (also a hay fork) is an agricultural tool with a long handle and two to five tines used to lift and pitch or throw loose material, such as hay, straw, manure, or leaves.
The term is also applied colloquially, but inaccurately, to th ...
'' ranked ''The Moon & Antarctica'' as the third best album of 2000, trailing ''
Kid A
''Kid A'' is the fourth studio album by the English rock band Radiohead, released on 2 October 2000 by Parlophone. It was recorded with their producer, Nigel Godrich, in Paris, Copenhagen, Gloucestershire and their hometown of Oxford.
After th ...
'' by
Radiohead
Radiohead are an English rock band formed in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, in 1985. The band consists of Thom Yorke (vocals, guitar, piano, keyboards); brothers Jonny Greenwood (lead guitar, keyboards, other instruments) and Colin Greenwood (bass) ...
and ''
Ágætis byrjun'' by
Sigur Rós
Sigur Rós () is an Icelandic post-rock band from Reykjavík, active since 1994. The band comprises singer and guitarist Jón Þór "Jónsi" Birgisson, bassist Georg Hólm, and keyboardist Kjartan Sveinsson. Known for their ethereal sound, fron ...
. The album ranked at number 49 on ''
The Village Voice
''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture paper, known for being the country's first alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher, John Wilcock, and Norman Mailer, the ''Voice'' began as a platform for the crea ...
''s
Pazz & Jop
Pazz & Jop was an annual poll of top musical releases, compiled by American newspaper ''The Village Voice'' and created by music critic Robert Christgau. It published lists of the year's top releases for 1971 and, after Christgau's two-year abse ...
year-end critics' poll. ''Pitchfork'' later named it the seventh best album of the years 2000 through 2004 and the sixth best album of the decade. ''
Tiny Mix Tapes
''Tiny Mix Tapes'' (also ''TMT'' or ''tinymixtapes'') is an online music and film webzine that focuses primarily on new music and related news. In addition to its reviews, it is noted for its subversive, political, and sometimes surreal news, a ...
'' placed it at number 51 on their decade-end list. ''The Moon & Antarctica'' was included in ''
Entertainment Weekly
''Entertainment Weekly'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''EW'') is an American digital-only entertainment magazine based in New York City, published by Dotdash Meredith, that covers film, television, music, Broadway theatre, books, and popular cul ...
s "The New Classics," a list of the one hundred best albums released within 1983 to 2008.
Rhapsody
Rhapsody may refer to:
* A work of epic poetry, or part of one, that is suitable for recitation at one time
** Rhapsode, a classical Greek professional performer of epic poetry
Computer software
* Rhapsody (online music service), an online m ...
ranked the album at number four on its "Alt/Indie's Best Albums of the Decade" list.
As of October 2006 the album has sold 492,000 copies in United States. In March 2009, ''The Moon & Antarctica'' was certified
gold
Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile met ...
by the
Recording Industry Association of America
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is a trade organization that represents the music recording industry in the United States. Its members consist of record labels and distributors that the RIAA says "create, manufacture, and/o ...
. In 2015,
Vitamin String Quartet
Vitamin String Quartet (VSQ) is an American musical group from Los Angeles known for its series of tribute albums to rock and pop acts.
VSQ is a series of string quartet projects developed and produced by CMH Label Group, an independent reco ...
paid tribute to the album by covering it in its entirety.
Reissues
Isaac Brock was dissatisfied with the final mix and the album artwork for ''The Moon & Antarctica'' following its original 2000 release.
[
] According to an interview given in ''
Filter
Filter, filtering or filters may refer to:
Science and technology
Computing
* Filter (higher-order function), in functional programming
* Filter (software), a computer program to process a data stream
* Filter (video), a software component tha ...
'' in 2004, he intended to remix the album "on his own time, using his own money, simply to have a copy he alone could hear".
Epic Records then offered to remaster the album to CD, reissuing it on March 9, 2004 with remastered audio, new artwork and four additional tracks from a
BBC Radio 1
BBC Radio 1 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. It specialises in modern popular music and current chart hits throughout the day. The station provides alternative genres at night, including electronica, dance, ...
session. Stephen M. Deusner of ''Pitchfork'' rated the remastered edition a 5.0 out of 10, writing highly of the original album itself but questioning the decision to re-release it just four years after its initial release, calling the additional material "paltry offerings" and commenting that "no one was really asking for it, and there's simply not enough here to justify the expense or even a rating as high as the original."
A vinyl and CD reissue was released on April 13, 2010 to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the album, with both versions reverting to the original artwork and track listing. On April 27, 2015, Music on Vinyl reissued the album in two different variations in Europe, with one featuring remastered audio on transparent 180g vinyl in a production run limited to 500 pressings, and the other on standard black vinyl.
Both removed the "locked groove" previously found on side 1 at the end of "Perfect Disguise".
Track listing
Personnel
;Modest Mouse
*
Isaac Brock
Major-General Sir Isaac Brock KB (6 October 1769 – 13 October 1812) was a British Army officer and colonial administrator from Guernsey. Brock was assigned to Lower Canada in 1802. Despite facing desertions and near-mutinies, he c ...
– guitars, vocals
*
Jeremiah Green
Jeremiah Martin Green (March 4, 1977December 31, 2022) was an American musician best known as a founding member and drummer of the indie rock band Modest Mouse from 1993 to March 2003, and again from May 2004 until his death in December 2022.
...
– drums, percussion
*
Eric Judy
Eric Scott Judy is an American musician best known as the original bass guitarist, co-founder, and occasional backing vocalist of the indie rock band Modest Mouse. He departed the group in roughly 2011 or early 20212.
Other work
Judy appea ...
– bass
;Additional personnel
*Ben Blankenship – lap steel guitar (1, 4), banjo (4), keyboards (5, 11, 14), guitar (8, 11, 15)
*
Brian Deck
Brian Deck is an American music producer and member of band Red Red Meat. He co-founded Idful Studios in 1988. Since becoming a full-time producer, Deck has worked with bands and artists including Modest Mouse, Iron & Wine, Califone, All Smiles, ...
– keyboards (6), drum programming (2)
*
Ben Massarella
Ben Massarella is an American percussionist and drummer. He is a member of Califone (band), Califone, a former member of Red Red Meat, Loftus (band), Loftus, and Orso (band), Orso, and co-founded Perishable Records with Tim Rutili in 1993. – percussion (5, 7, 12, 15)
*Greg Ratajczak – guitar (7)
*Jeff Kennedy – lap steel guitar (5)
*Tyler Reilly – violin (3, 5, 7, 9, 13, 14)
*
Tim Rutili – background vocals (11)
*Chiyoko Yoshida – background vocals (13)
Charts
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Moon and Antarctica, The
2000 albums
2004 albums
Modest Mouse albums
Epic Records albums